Whereas the medieval handicraftsmen performed a whole range of operations in the production of a single commodity, the manufacturing system broke down the productive process into a series of discrete steps, and assigned each step to a separate detail laborer.

However,...it nevertheless shared a basic feature in common with the medieval handicraft system: a continued reliance upon human skills and capacities.... The decisive step was the development of a machine technology which was not heavily dependent upon human skills or volitions, where the productive process was broken down into a series of separately analyzable steps.

The historic importance of the manufacturing system was that it provided just such a breakdown. The historic importance of Modern Industry was that it incorporated these separate steps into machine processes to which scientific knowledge and principles could now be routinely applied.

~ Karl Marx: Grundrisse (1976)

The Swarm: An Algorithm to Power an Intelligent Future [View]